http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-w...content=202606
You all might have heard about the "clown sightings" lately. Apparently people are freaking out about it. I don't see the big deal because Halloween is in a few weeks and most of this is probably just a publicity stunt for the IT reboot. People dressed as clowns are getting the cops called on them. Yes, a few of them are actually committing crimes, but it's getting to the point where professional clowns going to birthday parties are being accosted by police and overly anxious people. Beep beep, Ritchie. And what is the deal with these frenzied, worried Americans getting emotional about everything?
Personally, I've never been worried about crime happening to me. I've been the victim of credit card fraud twice, but that was more of an annoyance than anything else. I've also been pickpocketed and my car got broken into once. Again, those incidents just cheesed me off. But I've never been the victim of a violent crime. I've never felt the need to buy a gun or install an alarm. Sure, I have some blunt instruments at home but they're for the zombies. I've always walked back home from campus (about one and a half miles), even late at night.
When I was a freshman, I saw a play that didn't let out until the bus lines closed for the night. I walked five miles back to my dorm and didn't bat an eye. It was just exercise and was actually quite fun. Every time I tell that story to a girl, she tells me, "it must be nice to be a guy." My ex and a lot of my female friends seem to go through a checklist before they walk anywhere. I also remember my ex would check behind the shower curtain every time we got back from a weekend trip. Just in case there was a psycho axe murderer or whatever. It turns out my female friends do similar things too. Sometimes they ask me to stick around the office when a certain student comes by because they're not comfortable being in the same room alone with him. I do as asked, but whenever I ask why I'm told, "you have to be female to understand." And yet, this is common only among my American friends. When I lived in Korea, nobody did that safety calculus. In Qatar, the women took insane steps to not be alone with a man, but that was for religious reasons.
And NOW I'm getting into the political part of this. Why do you think Americans are so anxious these days? If Americans weren't so overwrought and agitated, this wouldn't even be news. Or were they always this anxious as a society, but now it's on social media so we're more aware of it?